Traditional Development Practices Are Likely to Fail for Mobile Apps

Published on: 14th Aug 2014

The traditional methods used to define and develop desktop applications will not work with mobile application development (AD), according to Gartner.

Gartner said that as demand from business units in enterprises puts
increasing pressure on IT organizations to deliver large numbers of mobile
applications, AD teams will have to to employ practices that are different from
traditional AD.

"Enterprise application development teams use traditional practices to
define and develop desktop applications; however, most don't work with mobile
app development, due to device diversity, network connectivity and other
mobile-specific considerations," said Van Baker, research vice president at
Gartner, during a presentation to IT leaders in China this month. "Instead, AD
managers should use functional, performance, load and user experience testing,
as well as agile development practices."

Mr. Baker said that users find it challenging to effectively describe what a
mobile app needs to do. As a result, the traditional practice of having a
business analyst sit down with the mobile app end users - employees for
business-to-employee (B2E) apps and consumer focus groups for
business-to-consumer (B2C) apps - to define requirements for a new mobile
application normally fails.

"There are several reasons these efforts don't succeed for mobile
applications, even though they've worked historically. Firstly, mobile apps are
a new category for most users and secondly, mobile apps are constrained by the
nature of the platform and the size of the screen, so porting the workflow of a
mature desktop app is not viable," said Mr. Baker. "Finally, the experience
associated with mobile devices is significantly different from that of desktop
devices, including shorter session lengths and limited presentation, due to
screen size constraints that affect how mobile apps need to function."

Most complaints about mobile apps have to do with a poor user experience.
This can be due to poor user interface (UI) design, poor application workflow or
poor responsiveness. The development team needs to focus on designing the
optimal UI as a starting point for mobile AD, and developers need to combine
this with a workflow that represents how users actually work.

"Letting the users experience what the application will look like and
building the screens on the fly with the appropriate tools will ensure that the
initial build of the app looks familiar to the users and is close to what
they'll need once the application has been piloted or deployed," said Mr.
Baker "This alone will result in a higher chance for a successful development
effort."

Testing mobile applications also differs greatly from testing traditional
desktop applications. For a mobile app, each device OS can behave differently,
depending on the actual device on which it is being used and the wireless
network to which the device connects. Therefore, testing of mobile apps must be
conducted across a combination of device types and OSs. It should employ, at a
minimum, a two-tier approach of testing on device simulators and on a subset of
the latest or most popular devices, because simulators don't always produce the
real-world user experience of physical devices. This can be supplemented by
in-the-wild user experience and device testing, which is recommended for B2C
apps.

"The important thing for enterprises to realize at this point in the mobile
app maturity cycle is that there is still much to learn about how to design,
build and deploy great mobile apps," explained Mr. Baker.

Once the app is deployed, it is important to understand how it is actually
used, because behaviors may change. This suggests that in-app instrumentation
and the analytics that are associated with it are critically important as
developers can leverage them to learn what makes a mobile app successful or
unsuccessful. In-app analytics, offered by specialist vendors (such as Flurry)
or available with MADP solutions, such as Appcelerator, Kony, IBM and Pega
Software, can tell developers and the business sponsors of the app what users
are doing inside the applications they're using.

The rapid pace of change in the mobile market is putting pressure on
development and operations teams to adopt rapid development and deployment
practices that constantly iterate their mobile applications as expectations
change. Hence, it's imperative to employ agile development to quickly iterate on
improving the mobile app. Even as mobile app development matures, the need for
ongoing analytics to monitor how the app is used and confirm assumptions will
not go away. This is due, in part, to the frequent release of new versions of
mobile OSs and new devices. In addition to their immaturity, mobile apps are
typically more focused in terms of the functionality of the app.

According to Gartner, typical in-house desktop AD frequently takes
approximately 18 months, and when deployed, the application may be maintained
for as long as five years prior to retirement. In addition, typical desktop
applications are rarely revised more than once after deployment and are
relatively stable, so not too challenging for operations teams to manage during
their life cycles.

"Mobile apps are different. They need to be frequently revised to meet
end-user expectations, and this agile development process especially requires
operations to be on top of infrastructure and systems to support frequent mobile
app deployments and pushed updates," said Mr. Baker. "The number of mobile
device types further complicates mobile app development and operations efforts,
because the range of device screen sizes, resolutions, hardware API access and
performance is fragmented and changes rapidly. The pace of change in the mobile
market presents challenges in particular to the operations team, and this pace
is unlikely to slow down."

All rights reserved. Reproduction of this website,in whole or in part, in any form or medium without express written permission from cellular-news is prohibited. Your use of this website is subject to legal terms - Site Map.